Justice-Oriented Literacy Coaching


Book Description

This book explores notions of justice-oriented literacy coaching and offers a way of being in the world with young people, teachers, and communities that centers transformative coaching, teaching, and learning. It is intended to disrupt the traditional and historical positioning of literacy coaches in schools today. Through the lens of social justice and liberatory education, Sailors and Manning begin a dialogue with literacy coaches to help them reconsider their own roles and positions as agents of change in schools. Using vignettes and stories to illustrate potential paths into emancipatory literacy learning environments, the authors present literacy as a socially-situated act of meaning-making. Accessible and inviting, this book provides pragmatic tools for literacy leaders to embody social justice, to grapple with big social concepts, to imagine possibilities, and to stimulate creative thinking with the teachers at their schools and with the students in their classrooms. Intended for literacy coaches in grades K-6 and graduate students in literacy education, this book includes a wealth of resources and examples from real-world contexts, as well as spaces for the reader to interact and engage with the text through journaling and self-reflection.




Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain


Book Description

A bold, brain-based teaching approach to culturally responsive instruction To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Culturally responsive instruction has shown promise, but many teachers have struggled with its implementation—until now. In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction. The book includes: Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships Ten “key moves” to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners Prompts for action and valuable self-reflection




Mentoring Preservice Teachers Through Practice


Book Description

Supporting and challenging cooperating teachers to grow in their mentoring and coaching practices with preservice teachers and also in their own work as classroom teachers, this practical guide presents and illustrates the Coaching with CARE model—a framework for reflection and action that helps cultivate a perspective on teaching that puts students at the center of teacher preparation and places value on apprenticeship and participation in learning. The CARE model takes a turn away from traditional evaluation-based "training" approaches, offering a way for cooperating teachers, and facilitators and university teacher educators who work with them, to come together to shape innovative coaching and mentoring experiences for preservice teachers. Mentoring Preservice Teachers Through Practice, building on the authors’ own work with cooperating teachers, is based on the most recent research on learning to teach and supporting preservice teachers and grounded in the realities of teacher education today. Each chapter includes questions for discussion and suggested readings that can be used to explore the focus of the chapter more deeply as well as relevant research reports published by the authors.




Preparing and Sustaining Social Justice Educators


Book Description

Preparing and Sustaining Social Justice Educators spotlights the challenging and necessary work of fostering social justice in schools. Integral to this work are the teachers and school leaders who enact the principles of social justice--racial equity, cultural inclusivity, and identity acceptance--daily in their classrooms. This volume makes the case that high-quality public education relies on the recruitment, professional development, and retention of educators ready to navigate complex systemic and structural inequities to best serve vulnerable student populations. Annamarie Francois and Karen Hunter Quartz, along with contributing scholars and practitioners, present an intersectional approach to educational justice that is grounded in research about deeper learning, community development, and school reform. Throughout the book, the contributors detail professional activities proven to sustain social justice educators. They show how effective teacher coaching, for example, encourages educators to confront their explicit and implicit biases, to engage in critical conversations and self-reflection, and to assess teacher performance through a social justice lens. The book illustrates how professional learning collaborations promote diverse, antiracist, and socially responsible learning communities. Case studies at three university-partnered K-12 schools in Los Angeles, demonstrate the benefits of these professional alliances and practices. Francois and Quartz acknowledge the difficulty of the social justice educator's task, a challenge heightened by a K-12 teacher shortage, an undersupplied teacher pipeline, and school closures. Yet they keep their sights set on a just and equitable future, and in this work they give educators the tools to build such a future.




Achieving Excellence in Preschool Literacy Instruction


Book Description

High-quality preschool programs are essential to improving children's outcomes in reading achievement and leveling language and literacy disparities among students from diverse backgrounds. Grounded in state-of-the-art research evidence, this practice-oriented book demonstrates how preschool professionals can create, evaluate, and sustain exemplary programs. Chapters from leading authorities cover coaching, assessment, and differentiation, as well as explicit strategies for teaching English language learners and helping at-risk readers. Discussion questions and suggested activities for professional development are included, as are reproducible assessment forms and planning tools for use in the classroom.




Handbook of Research on Social Justice and Equity in Education


Book Description

There is growing pressure on teachers and other educators to understand and adopt the best ways to work with the various races, cultures, and languages that diverse learners represent in the ever-increasing culturally-diverse learning environments. Establishing sound cross-cultural pedagogy is also critical given that racial, cultural, and linguistic integration has the potential to increase academic success for all learners. To that end, there is also a need for educators to prepare graduates who will better meet the needs of culturally diverse learners as well as support their students to become successful global citizens. The Handbook of Research on Social Justice and Equity in Education highlights cross-cultural perspectives, challenges, and opportunities pertaining to promoting cultural competence, equity, and social justice in education. It also explores multiple concepts of building a bridge from a monocultural pedagogical framework to cross-cultural knowledge. Covering topics such as diversity education and global citizenship, this major reference work is ideal for academicians, researchers, practitioners, policymakers, instructors, and students.




Stardards for the Preparation of Literacy Professionals 2017


Book Description

"(Standards 2017) sets forth the criteria for developing and evaluating preperation programs for literacy professionals. Developed by literacy experts across the United States, the standards focus on the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for effective educational practice in a specific role and highlight contemporary research and evidence-based practices in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and leadership." -- Back cover.




Ambitious Science Teaching


Book Description

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented. The book is organized around four sets of core teaching practices: planning for engagement with big ideas; eliciting student thinking; supporting changes in students’ thinking; and drawing together evidence-based explanations. Discussion of each practice includes tools and routines that teachers can use to support students’ participation, transcripts of actual student-teacher dialogue and descriptions of teachers’ thinking as it unfolds, and examples of student work. The book also provides explicit guidance for “opportunity to learn” strategies that can help scaffold the participation of diverse students. Since the success of these practices depends so heavily on discourse among students, Ambitious Science Teaching includes chapters on productive classroom talk. Science-specific skills such as modeling and scientific argument are also covered. Drawing on the emerging research on core teaching practices and their extensive work with preservice and in-service teachers, Ambitious Science Teaching presents a coherent and aligned set of resources for educators striving to meet the considerable challenges that have been set for them.




Culturally Proficient Coaching


Book Description

Why a new edition of Culturally Proficient Coaching? Why now, especially? Because several polarizing years later, there’s even greater urgency for us all to critically examine our attitudes, beliefs, and practices when working with students who look or sound "different." No matter how broadly you define coach, no matter which coaching model you follow, this is the resource to help you get started. With the first edition, the authors’ big goal was to shift our thinking in service of standards-based teaching and leading, and equitable interactions that support all students achieving at highest levels. Now, with this second edition, the authors add a third goal: to encourage a more holistic mindset and expanded contextual uses. New features include: Enhanced research on the effectiveness of coaching in educational settings New data on response to implicit bias and microaggressions--subtle and unintentional, yet destructive, forms of discrimination that continue to marginalize Refinement and updating of the Tools of Cultural Proficiency, which enable you to provide equitable life-affirming experiences to all cultural groups Expanded models of Culturally Proficient Coaching Conversations A special section on crafting Breakthrough Questions to shift entrenched mindsets and barriers to Cultural Proficiency By design, Culturally Proficient Coaching is an intentional, inside-out approach that mediates a person’s thinking toward values, beliefs, and behaviors that enable effective cross-cultural interactions and equitable learning environments. Here’s your opportunity to serve as that expert and trusted mediator, boosting educators′ cultural confidence and consciousness, while honing their coaching skills. "We owe it to ourselves and to our children to productively embrace and engage diversity, with all of its tensions, for the sustainability of humanity. These authors have given us the invitation, the road map, and the call to action. the embarkment is up to each one of us." --Carolyn M. McKanders, Director Emeritus Center for Adaptive Schools and Thinking Collaborative




Teaching Literacies in Diverse Contexts


Book Description

Literacy education can take place in many locations and periods across the lifespan. Literacy educators require flexibility and a deep toolbox to meet their students’ diverse needs, regardless of whether they work in traditional school and college settings or in other environments with varied populations. Teaching Literacy in Diverse Contexts shows how practical experiences can be used in creative ways to support educator development for teaching literacy in a global context. Mentorship between a developing literacy educator and an experienced teacher educator is central to the book, and to the practical experiences in training or professional development that it focuses on. Chapters share the creative solutions discovered during mentorship that supported developing literacy educators to teach with authenticity in a number of contexts, including the adult learning sector, a rural community in Africa and alongside parents of very sick children. The authors demonstrate how this can be done in a sensitive and culturally relevant manner by parents, volunteers and teachers with varying degrees of experience in both formal and informal spaces. Together, the chapters build a crucial resource for preparing a broad range of literacy educators to teach literacy in many contexts where policy on how best to teach reading and writing to diverse student bodies ebbs and flows.